Midnight Oil

Subject: Re: Jim and Martin
From: "Tom Spencer" <tomspencer@eml.cc>
Date: 10/08/2008, 2:30 pm
To: powderworks@yahoogroups.com.au

Dear Powdies

Re: Jim and Martin on guitar: (from Mark Dodshon's "Beds Are Burning -
Midnight Oil: the journey" (Viking, 2004) p 188.

Nick Launay, on the production of "10,9,8..."

"One of the things we definitely came up with, which became a Midnight
Oil thing from then on, was this whole thing of getting big acoustic
guitar sounds that sounded unlike any guitar sounds out there.  It's
most audible on "US Forces", and how we did that was with Jim on a
Fender acoustic and Martin on a Martin acoustic (I think!) - both are
great-sounding acoustic guitars.  They both played at the same time,
facing each other, looking at each other.  I pushed RECORD and we went
from beginning to end and they both strummed all the way through.  Then
we went back to the beginning of the song and they swapped guitars and
did the same again.  Sometimes, depending on the song, one of them would
play a dobro.  It has a very clangy sounds, so on "US Forces"
particularly that's what we used.  So there were four acoustics. 
Sometimes we'd go further and there would be six, I think "US Forces" is
six, a combination of three different guitars, twice.  And they play so
tightly, so consistently with their strumming, that...!  

Later on, when I recorded other bands with two guitarists, I would go,
"I've got this great trick" but it would never work.  I'd copy the whole
idea, and of course it's a very difficult thing to do.  Any tiny change
or little skip in the strumming from one take to the next and it would
sound like sh.t.  It has to be identical, every time.  That's the only
way it's going to sound like one huge big acoustic instrument.  And
that's what we wanted on "US Forces".  We wanted it to sound like this
big acoustic guitar that one person was strumming.  And it does.  And
the reason it does is because they're so good".

Jim and Martin are due to play this Sat'dee, Jubilee Hotel, Bris-vegas
2pm ($10), as part of 4ZZZ's radio-thon.  (10 other bands are also on
the bill).

t